Schools out but no rest for the industry

Schools out and as we face an unusual summer, many businesses are in the waiting game for slow and steady drip of budgets to be released. With end users looking for innovative ideas to surprise and delight customers, distributors are working hard to bring ideas to the table, working with suppliers to stimulate new orders and opportunities where promotional merchandise continues to provide the perfect solution. With many suppliers and distributors still in the process of bringing teams back into offices and off furlough, every ounce of energy is tuned to changes in pace and need, ready to capture every order on the horizon.

2021: late recovery predicted

Across the end user industry there are several economic forecasts released during the year, providing important insight into areas of advertising and marketing spend. With direct impacts on our industry and the wider economy, these reports have been coming thick and fast over recent months as creative industries try to predict the severity of the downturn.

One reliable think tank, WARC, released their ad spend report in conjunction with the Advertising Association this week, widely hailed as the most accurate gauge to end user spend impacting our industry. The report shows showing a sharp rise in online retail driving short term investment into performance led media as e-commerce grows. Many distributors with online end-user facing order systems have also seen similar growth patterns.

How does this realistically impact our industry? Overall, the wider retraction of general advertising and marketing spend will see marketers reassessing short and long term investments. Widely understood, short term measures such as piling marketing budgets into areas like programmatic advertising can be very damaging for brands and long term connection for consumers in a consumer or corporate space. The good news for our industry is the major influencers of spend in our markets are pushing marketing budgets towards long term, brand building activity and finding ways to go beyond digital.

With GDP expected to fall 9% this year, the BPMA is tracking end user spend behaviours carefully to help predict industry trends. With WARC figures indicating that growth will bounce back in Q2 2021 according to forecasts, this highlights the road to recovery as one that will be slow, painful but steadily grow over time. It is anticipated with a sector wide push not to restrict marketing and advertising spend, predicted spend patterns will look to reward and retain customers with direct benefit for our industries.

BPMA Supplier and Distributor Forum: 6th August

In the lead up to the BPMA’s conference in September, two special sessions for BPMA suppliers and distributors are being hosted to further understand critical industry needs. Invitation only, these sessions will be held on August 6th to shape debates and lobby on behalf of members. If you’re a BPMA member, look out for your invitation to this session.

Look out for your personal invitation. Like to join these sessions? Email Carey Trevill for joining details.

If you have an issue you’d like to raise or just want to share your views, please get in touch with the BPMA team via enquiries@bpma.co.uk.

© Copyright 2022 The BPMA | All rights reserved.